Well I have been studying a little bit and reading a lot on these forums. I came back to the Church a while ago and it took some studying and soul searching to find my way home.
In the past as most people I never really talked to people who came to my door, evangelizing or promoting church events. Well Saturday was my big day, in the morning a couple comes up knocking at my door.

My heart was pumping, brain going all crazy as I was so nervous as this was my first time to really try and see what would happen. They came and invited me to a concert that their church was promoting. I said thank you for the invitation and if they had time they were invited to come with us to do some yard work at the Catholic Church Saturday.
I will go with a he said I said format:
The gentleman said that he had some problems with the beliefs of the Catholic Church and he couldn’t go. Well I then said "many people have problems with what they think the Catholic Church is but I find it makes a lot of sense to me."
Him:"The Catholic Church teaches that you are supposed to confess sins to a priest, he is just a man and why do you call priests father? The Bible says call no man father"
Me(thinking, thank God something I can answer more or less):
"Well the Bible instructs us to confess our sins to one another, but let me tell you about where the Bible says call no man father… I had problems with this as I was investigating the Catholic Church and this is what I found…(I then explained how Paul states how he became your father in Christ, and in 2 Timothy, he talks about Timothy as his beloved child.) The Church is like a big family with spiritual fathers, mothers, sisters and brothers . Even Jesus called Abraham, Father Abraham.
Him: "that make sense but what about graven images and this and this etc.

He kept going, and thank God I was able to keep up and make some sense, even though later I felt I made some mistakes. We ended up with me inviting him again to talk some more and his wife urging him to leave.
Afterward I sat and ran it through my mind, thinking to myself I should’ve said this or I should’ve said that, but what can you do, I just prayed about it.
--------------------- Fast forward about 8 hours

I have a chance to sneak out of the house, since my wife decided we need to fill up the water cooler bottle. I volunteer to go fill it up and on the way I drive to their concert. I meet this guy I talked to and he says how he talked to some friends about me and how before he thought that Catholics were just a bunch of idol worshippers. He also said it was surprising that a Catholic made the Passion of the Christ and that was pretty impressive to him.
I invited him to come to my house anytime and left to go pick up my water.

Well there is my story for this weekend, on my first time talking to someone who came to evangelize me. I am not sure if this belongs in this forum, but I feel the apologetics forum has helped me tremendously.

I think that’s a great experience. I’ve noticed that after learning a few things, nobody comes over any more :crying:

I live in a highly populated Mormon area and haven’t seen any missionaries is a while either. The word must be out on me, becuae the last time they came over, I inadvertantly made one cry…

Isn’t that the truth. I even invited some JW’s in for Bible study. A husband and wife. The wife left severely confused, and even though I asked them back, they never came. I go no knocks on my door for several years after that. I would see the JW’s out going door to door, but mine was skipped. I kind of miss it.

Your right, I can only give credit to God. It did help to pray and take time in answering, letting discussions get out of control is never fruitful. A small internal prayer is useful in keeping your mind focused and calm. I tried to just keep giving simple concise answers to try and explain my position.
I did also have a little help from my cheat sheet hidden in my Bible so I was able to find passages in the Bible. But this just was for one question on purgatory and thanks to the cheat sheet I was able to make a decent point.
Also using my daughters picture as a visual aid was good when he brought up idolatry.
This forum has been invaluable to me in helping to defend the faith and learn more.

[quote=Seeks God]I think that’s a great experience. I’ve noticed that after learning a few things, nobody comes over any more :crying:

I live in a highly populated Mormon area and haven’t seen any missionaries is a while either. The word must be out on me, becuae the last time they came over, I inadvertantly made one cry…
[/quote]

First: Nice work, Scylla! Keeping it cool and friendly is always a good thing.

Seeks – I know what you mean about “nobody comes any more” – People don’t generally do door-to-door evangelizing in my neighborhood, but I get the occasional opportunity in a friendly little nearby restaurant. Like Scylla, I keep the answers SHORT and more or less based on the “I-don’t-know-where-people-get-these-ideas-about-Catholics” plane. If we do nothing more than show that what we believe IS based in Scripture and take the edge of the anti-Catholic poison, we have done something good!

Good work, Scylla. This person may not convert, but it sounds like at least you gave him something to think about. As Karl Keating says, if what you do helps to make a person an ex-anti-Catholic, at least that’s one you’ve taken out of the fray.

Well I then said “many people have problems with what they think the Catholic Church is but I find it makes a lot of sense to me.”<<<

Interesting. One of the things Archbishop Fulton Sheen said was…“There are not one-hundred people in the United States who hate the Roman Catholic Church, yet there are millions who hate what they mistakenly think the Roman Catholic Church is”!!!

As Bishop Fulton Sheen used to say, “People do not hate Catholicism, they hate what they mistakenly think Catholicism is.” I’m telling you the people that come into the restaurant I work at on Saturday nights fit that profile. Anyways one of my students brought up the whole call no man father bs. I asked her what she calls the man that married her mother. She responded that that is differnent. So then I brought up where St. Stephen addresses the elders as, “fathers.” She just shrugged her shoulders and said, “I didn’t write the Bible.” Then I explained to her what Christ meant. It felt good to clear up a pre-concieved misconception. My father’s friend is an Evangelical (and is not anti-Catholic) she asked me what I thought of Devil in the scourging scene from the Passion of the Christ. I told her it was a mockery of the Madonna. She said she never in 100 years would have thought of that, and she said since I was Catholic I picked up faster then she would have. I then explained to her the relation of that scene with Genesis 3:15, she never thought before that the Blessed Mother was mentioned in that verse.

[quote=Seeks God]I think that’s a great experience. I’ve noticed that after learning a few things, nobody comes over any more :crying:
[/quote]

Back in February we had missionaries in our neighborhood two Saturdays in a row. Both times that walked right past my house, I wasn’t too upset about it. My Father’s Evangelical friend must have told them about me.

MAN!!! Do you guys all get the good Protestants or WHAT?!!! I deal with obstinant ones, who, just cannot admit there’s another way & that they may have to change THIER views!!! Where do you all live & such so I can send these people over!!

…Anyway…Scylla!!!

Congratulations on being able to witness effectively to this man. It sounds like he is open to ideas, even if he may not believe them (but, I shall pray that he will). WAY TO GO!!! ALSO!!, it sounds as though neither of you got defensive & let pride enter into the theological debate. That is AWEsome!!! VERY well done, Sir. :clapping:

Thank you for the uplifting story. I know it can be scarey to be in a position where you must defend the Catholic Church. Well done.

I had to chuckle at imagining the wife urging the husband to leave. It just brought an image of this woman thinking “Dear God, get me out of this idol worshiper’s house!!!” This story belongs in the forums, it is good to share.

Thank you very much for the encouragement and prayers, my response about what people think the Catholic Church is, was my shortened version of Fulton Sheen’s quote, I was really watching what I said, because it is so easy to say the wrong thing, if you start to get caught up in trying to make a point or win. I have to remind myself always, it is about stating the truth, not beating the person over the head.
They were in front of my house talking to me for about 10 minutes, and there were two times when he started going into a diatribe of saying how many people are going to hell, for fornication, adultery, etc, etc. Both times he did this, I said something like “God does the judging, only He knows, we should always use charity when talking to other people about Jesus.” This helped a little in calming him to be able to keep talking, also pointing out Peter 3:15, helped at the end.

Your right about how good it feels to share your faith, if only it goes this well 1 out of 100 times I think it is worth it. God willing I improve my verbal skills and knowledge, sometimes it’s good to be in a place where there is a large majority of protestants, it gives me greater chances to learn.

Getting tongue tied is my greatest fear, but keeping short, precise answers and short explanations helps. I cannot stress also how much it helped to pray for guidance as you discuss your faith.

Well I am off to breakfast, then to my apologetics class, which just started attending in my parish about 4 weeks ago.